


Before Ever After

by allyoops



Category: Original Work
Genre: Bathe them and bring them to me, Casual misogyny, Claiming and conquering, Droit de seigneur, F/M, Forced Kissing, Kidnapping/Imprisonment, Loss of Virginity, Rape Because Captor Thinks Captive is Pretty, Rapist thinks they are owed sex, Shoved and dragged, gagged
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:35:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27801631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyoops/pseuds/allyoops
Summary: Sir Alaric is delighted to learn that the village maid he's had his eye on is finally preparing to wed.He is surprised, however, by how reluctant she is to come to his bed.
Relationships: Local lord/Peasant woman getting married
Comments: 15
Kudos: 83
Collections: Naughty List 2020





	Before Ever After

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobberBaroness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobberBaroness/gifts).



It required the greatest exercise of self control to await the announcement of Isobel’s betrothal. Really, Sir Alaric thought, he was to be _congratulated_ on his feat of self restraint. He was magnificent in his forbearance! Long had he watched her, marking with pleasurable anticipation her progress from a mere slip of a girl, willowy and slender, wheat-coloured hair tossed carelessly about by the wind when she ran in the fields with her playmates, to the shy, sedate pace of young womanhood. When lately she had adopted the habit of veiling her hair he knew that his patience was soon to be rewarded, and he bade his agents keep very careful watch on the town and in the church, so he would know the minute the banns were read.

He’d have had her gladly many days before now. He had seen her bathed in firelight at harvest time last year and longed to push her down in the nearest haystack, but he knew better than that. She was a maid unclaimed and she had a right to her virtue until the appointed time arrived to claim it. He had been brought up properly to understand that just because a man had rights, did not mean he could go trampling on the proper order of things in his haste to enact the exercise thereof. Isobel would be his, he made sure of it, but he could not claim her until her handfasting was in the offing.

And then, at last, it was.

Roger the miller’s son had made his interest known, and given that he was a fine young man, well set up and fair of face and known to be honest in all his dealings, none were surprised to know that Isobel had acquiesced. The banns were read and Alaric rejoiced. He at once directed his man of affairs to communicate his intent to her father, and anticipated with much pleasure the reading of the third Sunday, when he would send his carriage to bear her in unheard of state to his house.

Only, most vexingly, it seemed the silly chit did not _want_ to come. He was quite put out when he learned of it. His father had, he knew, had some trouble of this kind with several maids in his own time, but Alaric was less invested in the tradition than his sire and so he had imagined his magnanimous restraint in his tenure as lord would, when he did act to claim his due, earn him a certain gratitude and willingness that his father had been denied.

But it would seem none had told Isobel how glad she should be of this.

Indeed, it seemed they actually had to bind her hand and foot to even get her in the carriage, her foolish mother caterwauling most horrifically until the father had thrown her into the cottage to get herself under control.

“He, at least, had a proper sense of thing?” Alaric queried, as his dishevelled man of affairs narrated the sorry tale. The man hesitated, then said yes, he supposed so.

“Reluctant, though,” he added. “Asked if a sum of money in lieu of the girl herself might not suffice.”

“Bah,” said Alaric, disgusted. “What price his daughter’s virtue? She owes it me, and thereafter to her husband. Imagine, a father suggesting he might buy such a gift! This is most distressing, Basil, I must say. No proper feeling for the old ways, even among the generation that should best know their worth.”

No indeed, Basil agreed, it was a sorry comedown for the estate and for morality in general. Then he retired to nurse the goose egg which stood out with some prominence on his brow, for the old lady had struck true ere she had been forcibly retired from battle.

Sir Alaric took his time in making preparations for that night. He ensured a proper bath was drawn for the girl, though he was given to understand she had wanted being held under the water to bring her about to a more biddable frame of mind. He even partook of ablutions himself, submitting to much scrubbing and bathing and an aggressive readying of his frame for the great honour that she was to be shown.

When at last he entered the chamber where the young woman was held, he found her clean and clad in a rich white shift, set all about with embroidery in gold and silver thread. She sat with head bowed and hands clasped, narrow shoulders shaking, but looked up on his arrival and gave a most affecting little cry.

“Sir Alaric,” she gasped, and flung herself at his feet. He, charmed by this obeisance, stooped to rest his hand kindly on her head before drawing her up to stand before him. She was a slight young woman, pale of hair and fair of face and possessing of a bewitching, jewel-like pair of eyes. Deep blue, and fathomless as the sea.

He lost himself in them until her voice broke through his reverie.

“Sir Alaric—surely I think there has been some mistake. I am told . . . they say that you plan . . . but it cannot be true. Can it? Tell me, please, that in naming your purpose for me they are much mistook.” She searched his face, poor maid, trusting in him to tell her aright what was planned for her. He smiled indulgently, quite appreciating this modest reserve. Of course her mother had not had time to prepare her for this, nor even, it seemed, the heart to. Her wedding was tomorrow, and Roger the miller’s son was an upright man. He would expect his bride to be innocent. All had, therefore, been done quite right, and the great task must fall to her lord of preparing her for her role.

“My dear,” he said kindly, “do not vex yourself. All will be as it should.” He guided her tenderly over to the bed, made fresh and ready for their use. “I will make you ready to be a bride, and you will find your husband much pleased when you come to him more understanding of your role.”

Isobel’s eyes flew open wide, which suggested perhaps she had more knowledge of what that role entailed than Alaric had imagined. But no mind, he decided. Any immodest knowledge she might possess could be shielded and explained away by his use of her tonight, and her husband would not despise her for it.

Feeling very magnanimous for the decision, Alaric turned to gesture that she should precede him onto the bed, only for Isobel to seize this opportunity to turn on the heel of one dainty slipper and flee. Flee! The ingrate.

She made it halfway to the door before Alaric was upon her, deeply astonished by her behaviour.

“Little fool!” he scolded, shaking her brutally and making a fist in her long, lovely hair, the better to secure a hold on her. “You would refuse your lord?”

“God help me I would,” she sobbed, sinking to her knees in supplication, and crying out at the pain this translated to her scalp where he held her. “I would go to my husband a maid, Sire.”

“If your husband wanted a maid, he should have taken you behind a haystack where all maids are made an end of,” Sir Alaric decided, and hauled her to her feet once more. “A man who betroths himself seeks permission of his lord to wed, and all worldly goods of that man are forfeit to the claim of the lord.”

He yanked her cruelly about to stand before him, locking his hands around the slender upper arms so that his fingers bit deep into her flesh, the better to mark her with bruises for her husband to observe on his wedding night, and be made by them all the more mindful of his station in life.

“You, my little beauty, are shortly to become your husband’s chattel. He made forfeit his claim on your maidenhead when he came with that petition to me.”

“But—” poor Isobel’s face was a study in tears. She was, he thought, beautiful even in the grip of her terror. Her lower lip trembled and she searched his face in clear hope of mercy, which, he thought, was really _most_ annoying. As though his patience in waiting this long to claim her were not a mercy of its own!

“But Roger came to you because it was the right thing to do. He . . . he said we could not proceed in a manner that was improper. To claim me before our wedding, to wed without your permission—these are not things that are done.”

“No indeed they are not. No more than it is the done thing to go to your husband a maid when the man who rules over you both demands that you yield to him in his bed, as I demand of you now.”

So saying, he flung her bodily onto that bed. She flew with a shriek and a cry, and before she could right herself in the deep plush of the feather tick he was on her.

She writhed in a manner most enchanting beneath him, and for a minute or two he even let her, taking pleasure in the futility of her attempt to take flight. Slender hands beat at him frantic as bluebird’s wings, and he held her wrists almost gently after a time, pinning them above her into the pillow, watching the heave and surge of her little bosom and the way the shock and fury ebbed, giving way to mute understanding and great fear.

“There, now,” he said tenderly, marking the change in her with pleasure. “I think we understand each other better, little maid.” And he bent to kiss her sweetly, which was an error, for she snapped at his nose with fine, straight teeth and he was obliged to shake her brutally, then follow this chastisement with a stern slap, the better to communicate the might of his displeasure.

“We will have none of that!” he decided, and gagged her with a length of silk he tore from one of the bed hangings. Her eyes flooded above the damp blue silk, rendered all the more lovely for the sparkling curtain of tears, and he quite forgot his anger in the answering heat of arousal.

“Much better,” he said softly. “There’s a little lady who quite knows her place.” Then he reached down and his hand searched greedily beneath the hem of her gown, past the soft plump flesh of her thigh, to the treasure of heat at the very top. She was soft and sweet and his touch spoke to some manner of readiness, if not true excitement. Quite enough to ask of any lady, under the circumstances.

She wept and gurgled beneath him, but he marked it not, except to think it made her much prettier to protest his strength without posing the risk of doing any actual harm.

“There’s a good girl,” he approved, his thumb intruding rudely at the very entrance of her. He was charmed by the way she went stiff and still beneath him then. “That is where you will receive me, and your husband thereafter, any night he might wish it. You see? A wife must always be ready and willing, for her husband has right to her and it would not do for you to imagine refusal is within your power to exercise.”

He could see her indignation flare at the suggestion that her beloved would ever subject her to such indignity—or perhaps she was agitated by the suggestion that she would ever think to refuse her handsome bridegroom. Either way, her fire sparked his lust and he rose up over her, quite ready to see it through.

“It is a very great honour I do you now,” he remarked. “I could have had you any time I liked, but you see, I waited until the night before your wedding. There is no risk of shame falling on you now, and no chance any will say you have not done what is right. To submit to your lord in this way,” he pressed a kiss to each of her eyelids, tasting with satisfaction of her tears, “is only proper.”

Then he bore down and the muffled scream he wrung from his conquest as he breached her little cunt was the sweetest music he had ever heard.

She would not consent to be ridden by him, but she had little actual recourse to refuse, so he did not mind her struggles in the least. Indeed, as he thrust steadily and she wriggled with futile desperation below, he thought he might not even have enjoyed it as much if she had submitted to him better than that. There was something magnificent in the power of it, being able to bear down on her with his weight and strength, feel her tight and hot and clutching around him, making known to her what he could do with the strength and size she so sorely longed to repel, and know there was naught she could do but take it.

He paused, panting, in his exertions to take in the sight of her beneath him. Painted warm and golden in the light of flickering candles, she was a vision. Like a painting, or something on a tapestry. In studying her he saw one breast had been bared by her struggles and the low neckline of the richly-worked stuff of her gown. It was plump and pert and impossible to resist.

He bent to capture the pink bud of the nipple between his lips, ignoring her muffled squeals and entreaties, and suckled with pleasure.

“You are an even sweeter bounty than I could have dreamed,” he said warmly, then thrust deeper still, so that her squeal became a groan and she resigned herself once more to his claim.

Sir Alaric, much satisfied, proceeded with his conquest.

He would have had her all night if his stamina permitted, but one good, rough, short ride and, later, a longer one and then one leisurely ride more were all he could muster. Isobel, for her part, was quite insensate by the end of it, curled up on her side like a sleepy kitten. She looked so much beaten and laid low that he was moved at last to free her mouth and press a kiss to the sweet, plumped red lips, so swollen by his abuses visited thereon.

“Now, my little woman,” he crooned, “look at you! A maid no more, but lovelier for the womanhood you have gained, and ready for any man to take to wife on the morrow.”

He stretched out beside her, pulling the slight, soft little body close to the hardness of his. One great hand he fit happily around her breast and gave a squeeze. She whimpered, pitiful, but did not further stir.

“Indeed,” he concluded, “you have done very well for yourself. Your husband will have every cause to be pleased, and I will make sure to tell him so.”

Isobel cried out feebly at that—in protest, it almost sounded, but surely not. What woman, after all, could hate the thought of being praised by her liege lord to her new lord?

Shaking his head, amused by the folly of the female of his species, Sir Alaric settled down beside her to rest. Isobel, conquered, tearful and very sore, fell away into a fitful sleep soon after. Her lord did not wait long to follow her, dreaming as he did of what fine bauble he might give the happy couple for their wedding present.


End file.
